South Brunswick Board of Education must ‘bite the fiscal bullet’

Now that the school district elections in South Brunswick are behind us, some observations are appropriate. The volume and intensity of letters written to the editor seemed extraordinary. Virtually all the letters were written in support of candidates. The nearly $110 million budget hardly solicited a comment.

This leads me to believe (a) control of the Board of Education was the real issue in the election; and (b) cost reduction to help alleviate the tax burden was not on anybody’s mind. Why is an analysis of the election important? The election results — as well as the campaign leading up to them — give us some clues.

Item: for the first time in memory, a partnership of former school superintendents (I’ll call it the "JimSam Coalition") worked very hard to change the balance of power on the Board of Education.

What could be the reason for this retirees’ alliance? Could it be the incumbents were not behaving as puppets? Isn’t there a more graceful way to retire, to be active in a positive way, and still continue to live in the community? Exerting such influence to bring about a change of control on the board has a worrisome effect on why this effort was undertaken.

Item: the last decade has demonstrated an extravagant budgetary escalation in the growth of bond issues and layer upon layer of administrative personnel increases.

Principals wanting assistants, superintendents having assistants, administrative staff getting larger with more and more advisers, and these larger staffs are still going outside the district to hire consulting companies to consult with, and so on, and so on. The bureaucracy continues to grow ad infinitum. Our taxes are reaching for the stratosphere. Recent decisions such as a new position of a publicist for the school district and ill-planned school expansion efforts just reveal the tip of the iceberg of higher tax burdens to come.

Is there a solution? It is not enough to put the blame on reduced state aid. The Board of Education must bite the fiscal bullet and tackle waste, duplicity, nepotism, and the continuing plague of bureaucracy. More effort must be put into creative cost reduction. Serious questions must be asked about every facet of non-teaching expenditures. Thorough and efficient education is a requirement by state law. Why not address the cost of activities that are not mandated?

Finally, former superintendents should not try to rig the makeup of the school board. The new superintendent should be given the opportunity to assume responsibility, bring new ideas into the district, and hopefully improve upon our growing fiscal dilemma.

Frank J. Chrinko

Franklin Park